Thomson

It’s a heck of a way to run a pre-election campaign. On the eve of an expected election, politicians usually spend their time playing up good news, downplaying the bad, shaking hands and kissing babies.

Susan Reade, winner of our Diana contest, wins tickets to Diana, a Celebration, which opens Feb. 9 at West Edmonton Mall, as well as the gala opening party.

Photograph by: Shaughn Butts
, Edmonton Journal

Our readers found no shortage of adjectives to describe the late Diana, Princess of Wales, when we asked them to tell us what she represented to them.

But it was Susan Reade who summarized it best (and in less than 200 words!), thus winning our contest and the chance to be among the first to see Diana, A Celebration at West Edmonton Mall and attend a gala party to celebrate the Feb. 9 opening of the exhibition in our city.

“It was inspirational to watch Diana’s personal growth from a naive girl to an influential international icon,” she wrote, detailing her personal evolution, her charity work, her success as an attentive and loving parent and her personal struggles. “Like Diana, we all have achievements and failures on life’s road. She represented the disappointments and promise of the human condition. Diana was flawed, but flawless in her humanity,” she concluded.

Reade, who works as sales manager at Astral Radio, says she’s been an admirer of the princess for all of her adult life, since watching her fairy tale wedding to Prince Charles on television as a teen.

“I remember staying up and watching the ceremony and just getting caught up in the fairy tale of it and I think that was probably true of a lot of young women my age at the time,” says Reade, 48.

“She had to wrestle with common problems like all of us did, but she had to deal with it under the microscope of royalty and paparazzi following her around, and it was heartbreaking.”

Reade says she loved Diana’s style, too, and is excited to see the exhibit, which includes her storied wedding dress along with 28 other gowns, two tiaras, plus family mementos and home movies.

The exhibit, on loan from the Spencer family’s Althorp Estate in England, is making its first appearance in Edmonton, running from Feb. 9 to June 9 at West Edmonton Mall.

Among our other favourite entrants was Gladys Teske of Sherwood Park, who said she watched Diana with interest throughout her life. “I was so fascinated and beguiled by her innocence, goodness and beauty that all the rest was simply unimportant,” she wrote.

Teske still keep her collectible Diana doll in a Plexiglas case in her living room, dressed in an exact, to-scale replica of the iconic wedding dress, right down to the elaborate train and veil. “Even her bouquet, it’s the exact replica — the same number of flowers, the same colours — everything exactly the same.”

Teske says she paid about $600 or $700 for the collectible. “I love weddings. She’s not my only wedding doll. I also have one of Jackie Kennedy and her wedding dress, and Michelle Obama — not her wedding dress but the inauguration grown that she wore.”

Many of the dozens of others who emailed us had personal stories of Diana touching a chord in their own lives.

Ingrid Harvie was pregnant at the same time as Diana; her own daughter was born just a couple of weeks before Prince William. Harvie’s sister died the same year as Diana, as did Mother Teresa — “three very special ladies, all of whom are remembered by me with love and great fondness for the special people they were, as they gave of themselves, expecting nothing in return,” Harvie wrote.

Colleen Zimmerman of Wetaskiwin was only seven months younger than the princess, and would have loved to have met her and talked to her, she said in her email. “Her legacy? Try to do what is good, and love your children with all your heart,” Zimmerman wrote.

Lori Halldorson recalls staying up to see Diana’s 1981 wedding with her then-five-year-old daughter, watching before the TV at a small table, decorated with a lace tablecloth, china plates and crystal goblets, “a front-row seat to see a real live princess get married to her prince,” she wrote. Diana “gave us real-life memories that a mother and daughter would share forever.”

Diana’s legacy of charity work and compassion was also a popular topic among readers. “She taught us it is OK to hold the hand of someone dying of AIDS, to hold closely the child dying of cancer and that people suffering from mental disorders are just as precious as all other living beings,” wrote Kelly Cooper of Grande Prairie.

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